Ixii PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



produce, of the cessation of one race and the substitution of another 

 without apparent physical cause, the Russian, even without travel- 

 ling out of his own country, can contribute, more than any other 

 observer, valuable materials for the general history of races. In 

 Botany I have on former occasions referred to Ledebour's 'Flora 

 Rossica ' as the most extensive complete Mora of a country which 

 we possess, and to the numerous papers by which it has been sup- 

 plemented. Several of these are stiU in progress, chiefly in the 

 Bulletin of the Society of IS'aturalists of Moscow ; and I have notes 

 of local Floras, and lists from various minor publications. The last 

 received volume of the Memoirs of the Academy of St. Petersburg 

 includes the botanical portion of Schmidt's travels in the Amur-land 

 and SachaUn, in which the geographical relations of the flora are 

 very fuUy treated of — and the first part of a very elaborate ' Flora 

 Caucasi ' by the late F. J. Ruprecht, which may be more properly 

 designated Commentaries on the Caucasian Plants than a Flora in 

 the ordinary sense of the word. It is an enumeration of species, 

 with frequent observations on affinities, and a very detailed exposi- 

 tion of stations in the Caucasus, but without any reference to the 

 distribution beyond that region ; above 300 large 4to pages only in- 

 clude the Polypetalse preceding Legiiminosae ; and the lamented death 

 of the author will probably prevent the completion of the work. 

 N. Kaufmann, Professor of Botany at the University of Moscow, an 

 active botanist of great promise, whose death last winter is much 

 deplored by his colleagues, had published a Flora of Moscow in the 

 Russian language, which had. met with much success. In the 

 zoology of Russia the most important recent work is Middendorflfs 

 ' Thierwelt Sibiriens,' analyzed in the ' Zoological Record,' vi. p. 1, 

 which, with the previously pubKshed descriptive portion and thebotany 

 of the journey by Trautvetter, Ruprecht, and others, forms a valuable 

 exposition of the biology of N.E. Siberia, a cold and inhospitable tract 

 of country, where organisms, animal as well as vegetable, are perhaps 

 poorer in species and poorer in individuals than in any other region 

 of equal extent not covered with eternal snows, MiddendorfF's 

 observations on this poverty of the fauna of Siberia, its uniformity 

 and conformity to the European fauna, on the meaning to be given to 

 the species, on their variability and on the multiplicity of false ones 

 published, on the complexity of their respective geographical areas, 

 on their extinction and replacement by others, <fec. are deserving 

 of the careful study of all naturalists. L. v. Schrenck's MoUusca of 

 the Amur-land or Mantchuria (reviewed in the ' Zoological Record,' 

 iv. p. 504) is equally to be recommended for the manner in which the 



